Recipes

Happy Valentine’s Day! Bradley and I have been together over ten years, and Valentine’s Day is a holiday that we have learned that it’s best not to celebrate. Every time we try to do something special, it ends in disaster! There was the year he ordered sushi to-go and brought me to the levee for an evening picnic. Romantic, right? Well, the view for the spot he picked out ended up being a construction site, and the sushi he ordered contained cucumber which is Bradley’s most detested food. He threw up right on the levee. Ever since that day, he writes in big letters on top of any sushi order “NO CUCUMBER– HIGHLY ALLERGIC!” There was the year that he ordered flowers to be delivered, and the flowers never showed up. The bouquet arrived a day late and it was obviously an afterthought made with any left-over flowers the florist could scrounge together to please an unsatisfied customer. My poor boyfriend spent Valentine’s Day arguing with the local flower shop’s customer service, and I think he’s only had one bouquet delivered to me since! Then there was the year that we were TRYING to play it low key. I was working late, and I came home to my darling husband hard at work cooking me a steak dinner. He pulled the roasted vegetables out of the oven and I noticed that he decided to line the baking sheet with wax paper. I smiled at him at explained the difference between wax paper and parchment paper, and we decided to order pizza instead. These days, we don’t even give each other cards for Valentine’s Day… they’d probably spontaneously combust and burn our house down! Brennan has had a fascination with trucks lately. His favorites are the mail truck and the garbage truck. One morning, he woke up and started yelling from his crib, “I HEAR THE GARBAGE TRUCK!!” Bradley sprinted past me, flew open the door to Brennan’s room, picked him up, and hurried outside so Brennan could get a glimpse of the garbage truck passing by. It was even sweeter because Bradley was in his underwear and it was about 35 degrees outside. These are the moments that fill my heart with love…not chocolates, or flowers, or cards with pink hearts. I saw a toy garbage truck that reminded me of my boys, so I picked it up and gave it to Brennan this morning. I never thought a garbage truck could be a symbol of love, but it is in our house! Cooking for my family is one way I show them I love them. I recently quit a side job that required me to work every Sunday morning partly because it meant that I wouldn’t be able to make banana pancakes for my boys. Banana pancakes trump making some extra spending money! This recipe is easy, delicious, and it’s a great way to use ripe bananas. Make them for someone you love! Bonus points if you can make them with a toddler on your hip!

Mash bananas with a fork into a large mixing bowl. Stir in eggs, almond flour, and cinnamon. The mixture should be a little lumpy.

Melt a tablespoon of butter on an electric skillet heated to 300 degrees. Ladle about 1/2 cup of pancake batter onto the hot skillet and cook without moving it for about 2 minutes. Place 3 frozen blueberries on each pancake 1/2 way through cooking the first side. Flip the pancake and cook for an additional minute.

These pancakes don't bubble up like pancakes made with a flour batter. Knowing when to flip them is a bit of an art. My best advice is to time it, and notice when the sheen of the cooking pancakes change from glistening to a dull shine. When you go to flip them, commit! Quickly slide the spatula under the pancake and flip.

I've topped these pancakes with everything from apples cooked in cinnamon and butter to frozen berries reduced with a little lemon juice. Left over pancakes make great "bread" for nut butter sandwiches too!

Notes

If you don't have an electric skillet, my advice is to get one! This recipe doesn't work as well if you're cooking on a pan on the stove because the heat doesn't get distributed evenly.

If you want to make a smaller batch, just use the same number of bananas and eggs and use 1/4 cup of almond flour for each banana. For example, if you have 4 bananas, use 4 eggs and 1 cup of almond flour.

We eat a lot of soups and stews in our house mainly because my toddler LOVES soup and will happily eat most vegetables as long as they’re in soup form, but also because as a working mom, one pot meals are a lifesaver. It’s also a great way to stretch a protein and save some money. I know all too well that eating real food can be expensive, so anything I can do to keep the cost down is a plus! I’m particularly fond of curries because turmeric, the spice that gives curry it’s yellow hue, is a natural anti-inflammatory with numerous health benefits. I like to make a big pot of something on Sundays that we can eat throughout the week. I’m not the best at meal planning or having a list prepared before I go to the grocery store, but I find that having 1 dish to pick from when we’re in a pinch helps tremendously. I will say that lack of meal planning sometimes puts me in a bind, but I usually come up with my most creative dishes when it looks like I have nothing in my fridge. My mom cooks the same way. She never uses recipes and usually just throws a little of this and a little of that in and it all just seems to work. Every night was a culinary adventure growing up because we rarely had the same thing twice! I love this recipe because it’s hearty, flavorful, and it’s packed with healthy fats and protein!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken thighs on baking sheet and cover in 2 tbsp of melted coconut oil, salt and pepper, and 1 tbsp of curry powder. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

In the meantime, heat the remainder of the coconut oil in a dutch oven or large pot over medium heat and sauté onion, carrots, bell pepper, and sweet potato until soft (about 10 minutes). Add the grated ginger and the garlic, and continue stirring for another 5 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and 2 tbsp of curry powder to the vegetables. Stir in the chicken broth and coconut milk and bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and chop into bite sized pieces, add the chicken to the pot and simmer for another 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning and heat level as desired.

Serve over coconut rice (substitute the water for coconut milk and cook rice according to the directions), and garnish with cilantro and lime.

September has arrived, and now that we’re past Labor Day, I’ve put away my white pants and seersucker even though it still feels like summer outside. The approaching fall season has me dreaming of pumpkin everything, warm stews, and boots with scarves. I’ll be sad to say goodbye to the fresh berries and citrus that is at the peak of freshness in the summer months, so I put together a chicken salad that celebrates all those flavors while they last! Great chicken salads have 4 important elements in my opinion:

Creamy

Tangy

Sweet

Crunchy

For the creamy factor, I used challenge compliant mayo, greek yogurt, and creole mustard. I’ve made chicken salad in the past with just greek yogurt, but it was always a little too tangy. I’ve attempted making mayonnaise from scratch and it’s a little tricky to get the right consistency, so I was happy to find this mayo made by the Primal Kitchen. I picked it up at my local Whole Foods and I really like it! The tanginess comes from lemon juice and it’s the perfect addition to thin out the dressing. Blueberries add the perfect pop of sweetness and the celery rounds everything out with a bit of crunch!

How much of a hippie am I? Well, currently I have cloth diapers drying in the sun and I’m making kombucha… so I guess a giant one! I first heard about kombucha a few years ago from one of my favorite food bloggers. A quick google search told me that it was fermented tea that is believed to have healing properties and is loaded with good bacteria and probiotics. I picked some up at the grocery store, and when I smelled it I had a flashback to my childhood and I remembered that my mom used to make this stuff in the 90s, except she called it sun tea! Kombucha is a bit of an acquired taste… it’s kind of vinegary, but it has a bit of a cult following especially with the hipsters. My favorite brands are Synergy and a local company called Big Easy ‘Bucha, but here’s the catch, the store-bought variety is expensive– between 3 and 4 bucks. I decided to start making my own a couple of months ago. Disclaimer, I am not a kombucha expert. I tend to learn how to do things in the kitchen by experimentation, so if you ARE an expert… please tell me if I’m doing something terribly wrong! Ha!

Things you need to make Kombucha:

A SCOBY: Which stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. This is basically a disk of bacteria and it feels exactly how you think it would… like a firm mass of snot rubber cement. Grossed out yet? This guy grows a new layer with every ferment, so to obtain one, find someone you know who already makes kombucha and ask for a baby SCOBY, or you can order a dehydrated one from amazon.

Large fermentation jar: I ordered this one from Amazon and I also use a large ball jar to experiment with different flavors.

Tea: I’ve heard black tea works best, but I’m experimenting with a batch of green tea right now. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Sugar: Making kombucha and sugar scrub are the only two reasons why I still keep sugar in the house! Honey will not work well, so I’ve been told!

Cheese cloth or a clean kitchen towel: The kombucha needs to be exposed to air to ferment, but you don’t want to attract flies. Cheese cloth secured to the jar with a rubber band does the trick!

Small glass bottles: I do a second ferment in 20oz glass bottles with a tight lid. I bought these!

A Funnel: for easy bottling!

A Strainer: For the floaters 🙂

Juice: Used to flavor the kombucha. This is also the only time juice is purchased in my house. While kombucha tastes sweet, the yeast feeds on the sugar so the end result is very low in sugar. I look for organic 100% juice!

My method:

I measure 6 tablespoons of sugar into my large fermentation jar and 4 tablespoons into the smaller one. I add boiling water and stir to dissolve the sugar and throw in some tea bags. Steep the tea according to the directions in terms of how many bags to use and how much time to leave them in… we’re making sweet tea people, don’t make it complicated. I make a concentrated tea and then fill the rest of the jar up with cold water. Once the tea has cooled, add 2 or 3 cups of starter kombucha, which is just unflavored kombucha from a previous batch. The first time I made it I just used some store-bought kombucha because obviously I didn’t have any from a previous batch and it worked fine. Then, drop in your SCOBY, cover the jar with cheese cloth secured with a rubber band and wait! I let the first ferment hang out for 7 days, but you can go as long as 30. The longer it sits, the less sweet it will be. Once the batch is done fermenting, I remove the SCOBY and put it in a clean bowl. I pour the kombucha into a bowl with a spout for easy pouring and I fill up glass bottles with 20% juice and 80% kombucha. This is where that funnel comes in handy! Be sure to reserve some to use as your starter kombucha for the next batch. Tightly screw on the lids and let the bottles sit for another 3-5 days. I told the owner of Big Easy Bucha that I let my second ferment go for 5 days and he laughed at me and told me I was making beer! The alcohol content is negligible, but it gets super fizzy if you let it go that long and I like that! After the desired length of the second ferment, refrigerate until drinking! I always strain mine straight into the glass (just in case there are floaters)! I made a summer cocktail with my grapefruit flavored kombucha! I love kombucha cocktails because they aren’t too sweet. Since the recipe calls for Ciroc vodka and Kombucha I decided to merge the two and call it a Cirocha– not to be confused with Sriracha! Ha.

Muddle the stevia with the fruit of two slices of grapefruit. Fill the glass with crush ice and add the Ciroc Vodka and kombucha (mine was grapefruit flavored). Add fresh squeezed lime juice from 1/2 a lime and garnish with a lime slice. Enjoy!

The 4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays. I grew up in Peachtree City, Georgia, also known as land of the golf carts. The “bubble”, as we lovingly refer to our little town, was planned with a system of golf cart paths and you can literally get anywhere in the city without stepping foot in a car. The 4th in PTC is magical. There’s a hokey little golf cart parade in the morning that Bradley, the Mardi Gras enthusiast, always gets a kick out of. Even the kids have golf carts on their shirts! That cute blue-eyed baby is my nephew, Braden, in 2010. Continue Reading